Question

Describe the differences among the events of the Salem witch trials, the McCarthy era, and current events of the war on terrorism. Your response should be at least 150 words.

Answer 1

Miller’s The Crucible (1953), written and performed at the height of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, contextualizes the tragic happenings in Salem Village and Salem Town, Massachusetts, from June through September of 1692. The unmistakable and frightening parallels between events at Salem and the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings present a powerful allegory for our contemporary world, especially the horrendous events of 9/11 and their aftermath. The Crucible employs the historical events of the Salem Witch Trials to develop a powerful critique of moments in human history when reason and fact became clouded by irrational fears and the desire to place the blame for society’s failures and problems on certain individuals or groups. While The Crucible achieved its greatest resonance in the 1950s – when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror was still fresh in the public mind – Miller’s work has elements that have continued to provoke public and intellectual responses across the globe. A number of similarities can be found in terms of mob psyche, power politics and treatment of the accused in the case of the Salem witch-hunts, McCarthy’s Muhammad Safeer Awan 2 Pakistan Journal of American Studies, Vol. 25, Nos. 1 & 2. Spring & Fall 2007 Communist-hunts, and today’s terrorist-hunts. The present study aims at analyzing the way power is politically manipulated in times of crisis. Hysteria, paranoia, and a carefully constructed fear are common threads in all three cases. The result is social stigmatization, stereotyping and persecution of the worst kind. The play has a broad sweep of moral contexts in which the mob mentality overrides personal integrity and places blame on scapegoats as it proves easier to do this than confront deep-rooted societal inadequacies, created especially by global capitalism.